ABSTRACT
Without assuming that a text independently generates a determinate, transhistorical and universally recognizable reading, it can, of course, be argued not only that an intimate relationship exists between ideology and specific reading practices, but also that these reading practices are fostered by some texts rather than others. In his influential essay on ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, Louis Althusser includes literature among the ideological apparatuses which contribute to the process of reproducing the relations of production, the social relationships which are the necessary condition for the existence and perpetuation of the capitalist mode of production (1971:121-73).1
